


We Said Forever

by BleedingInk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Character Death, Established Relationship, F/M, Heavy Angst, There's No Light At The End of The Tunnel In This One, implied suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 10:00:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12274104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: It was too easy falling in love with him and perhaps that was the mistake Meg made.





	We Said Forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LilyAnson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyAnson/gifts).



It was too easy falling in love with him and perhaps that was the mistake Meg made.

She thinks about it when she wakes up in the morning to an empty bed, with her face wet with tears. It’s the only time she allows herself to truly mourn what she’s lost, the only time she lets herself cry exactly as much as she wants to. As far as the world is concerned, she’s doing just fine. She’s dealing. She doesn’t feel this oppressive weight on her chest every time she opens her eyes and she doesn’t long bout going to sleep every night as soon as she wakes.

She grabs her cane from the side of the bed and begins the torturously slow routine of getting up. She has to limp towards the bathroom and hold on under the shower stream for as long as her knees can hold her. She has to put on her clothes with outmost care, in order not to disturb the growing pain in her back too much. She sits in her kitchen, waiting for the coffee machine to be ready, because she can’t stand in front of it like she used to do.

She hates that her body has turned against her in this way. She hates it because it leaves her way too much to think.

She didn’t intend to fall in love with him. She was nineteen and love was a game, a bet she made with her friends in the corner of the college’s cantina.

“Come on, Ruby,” Meg said laughing. “Give me a real challenge, come on.”

Ruby’s eyes travelled around and they fixed on the boy sitting alone at the other side of the cantina.

“That one!” she decided, pointing at him with her long manicured nail. “I bet you twenty dollars that you can’t get his number in ten minutes.”

“I say twenty,” Lilith added. “He looks a bit shy.”

He did. He was hunched over an open book, wearing a blue sweater vest and thick-framed glasses that almost slid all the way down to his nose. His dark brown hair was a mess, sticking on every direction as if he hadn’t bothered to comb it that morning when he woke out of bed.

There was something incredibly lonely about him, and because of it, Meg felt confident.

“I’ll be back in five,” she told her friends. Lilith and Ruby hooted in her wake.

It was a stupid game they played when they were bored. They scouted the campus, looking for good looking and not so good looking boys. They approached them and flirted with them. It was easy: batting their eyelashes, flipping their hair, laughing at whatever stupid comment they made. They boys fell for it every time and gladly gave them their number when they asked for them. Ruby, Lilith and Meg never called them back. They just counted the amount of numbers they’d collected, like hunters exchanging stories about their prey.

In time they developed a reputation, but they didn’t really care. It wasn’t like the attractive boys weren’t always on the prowl, and the dorks probably were happy that a girl was paying attention to them at all. They’d had some outburst, some boys chasing them around and angrily demanding to know why they hadn’t called them back. The three friends laughed about it. They didn’t think there was anything cruel about their behavior at all. They just thought that the boys didn’t really get the fun of their game.

But they were cruel and they were careless and Meg was the cruelest and the most careless. She was the undefeated champion of the game and she planned to stay in that position until they graduated, because having boyfriends was stupid and she never planned on getting married.

Until that day in the cantina. When everything changed as soon as she sat in front of the boy with the glasses.

“Hi,” she greeted him softly.

There was a second of hesitation on his part, as if he wasn’t sure if he had heard correctly or not. Then, slowly, he raised his gaze at her and Meg found herself out of breath. From afar, it didn’t seem like there was anything especial about him. But not that she was actually in front of him, she had to thank Ruby for at least selecting one of the eye candy. He had a squared jaw and a pointy nose that gave his face a sort of classic look, but it was his eyes that took the cake. They were big and bright blue and they softened his face even as he frowned at her with a mixture of disconcert and annoyance.

“Yes?” he asked and Meg almost jolted at the deepness of his voice. “Can I help you?”

“What are you reading?” Meg asked, recovering quickly.

“A book,” he replied, impatiently, as if that wasn’t obvious. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

So he was a dork in the body of an eye candy. Those were the worst, they tended to be arrogant and feel superior just because they knew they had it all.

Meg smirked at him and flipped her hair back. She was still going to get his number. It was a matter of honor.

“Well, I just saw you from all the way over there and thought you looked a bit lonely…”

“I was,” he groaned. “I chose to be.”

“… I figured, I could come here… make some small talk. Ask for your number.”

She grinned. This was usually the point in which they broke, even the arrogant ones. They just couldn’t resist the flattery of a girl paying her undivided attention to them.

But as she was about to find out soon enough, this one was different.

“No.”

“No?” Meg repeated, unbalanced by that curt reply.

“I appreciate your intention, but I don’t need or want any company. If I did, I would’ve looked for it. Now, if you excuse me, it’s clear that I have to finish my lunch elsewhere.”

He threw his book in his backpack, stood up with his half-sandwich in hand and strode away towards the cantina’s door.

Meg was so stunned but his abruptness that she didn’t even think about cheating and writing a fake number so her humiliation in front of Lilith and Ruby was lessened. They wouldn’t have believed her anyway. They had been watching the encounter closely.

“What was that?” Ruby asked while Lilith burst into giggles.

“Oh, my God, he was a dickhead,” Meg said, her cheeks turning red. “Such a pompous ass…”

“Oh, sweetie,” Lilith said, wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes. “Do you want me to pick another one for you?”

“No,” Meg said, almost as abruptly as the boy had.

“No?”

“I bet you fifty dollars that not only do I get his number next time, but I will bang him by the end of the month.”

She didn’t know why she made that bet. Perhaps because her pride was a little wounded, perhaps because it was as if his eyes were seared into her mind. But she was decided to get that boy.

She was still playing. She still thought it would be easy to walk away before anything turned serious.

Ruby and Lilith exchanged looks and they all shook on it.

Meg finishes her coffee and stands in front of the sink. She slowly washes all the dishes and mugs, except for one.

His favorite mug hangs at the edge of the counter, left there since the last morning he was home. The coffee grounds has been long solidified and she supposed she should wash it. She supposed her stubborn refusal to accept what happened, to deny it even in the face of all the evidence, has something to do with it. She wants the house to look just the same when he returns.

Even though it’s foolish to hope that he will return at all.

The next time she saw him was that very same Friday. She was lucky: they were at a party thrown in the frat house of a boy named Sam, who Lilith and Ruby were both fawning over. They had both left her alone to try to find him and convince him he had to dance with one of them, and Meg was scouting the room for someone cute to make out with when she spotted “the one that got away”, as her friends had taken to call him.

He was standing by himself next to a column, a plastic red cup in his hand and looking like he wanted the earth to open up and swallow him. Parties were clearly not his scene, but they were Meg’s and she was decided to use this fact to her advantage.

“Hello, again,” she said, sliding towards him and giving his her best beam.

He startled, as if he wasn’t expecting him anyone to talk to him. He squinted his eyes at her even though he was wearing his glasses and Meg felt slightly offended at the fact he clearly didn’t remember her.

“From the cantina?” she reminded him. “You told me to fuck off. More or less. It was kinda rude.”

“Oh,” he muttered and nervously rubbed the back of his neck. “Yes. I’m sorry about that. I was reading.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, like him reading justified everything. Meg would soon discover that was exactly the case: he didn’t like to be interrupted when he was focused on a book, lost faraway in some fictional land. She would also find, surprisingly, that she didn’t like interrupting him, because the way he squinted his eyes despite his glasses and the way he wrinkled his nose made him look adorable.

“Well, you’re not reading now,” Meg pointed out. “And I’m sorry to tell you this, but parties are precisely the place where you make small talk with strangers.”

He cringed, almost as if that was exactly what he was fearing, and looked around, but there was no one to save him and no way to escape that conversation. Meg was having the time of her life teasing him.

“I’m not good at that,” he admitted, almost like a defeat.

“Small talk or talking to strangers?”

“Both.”

“Well, that’s got an easy solution.” Meg extended her hand out to him. “Hi, my name’s Meg Masters.”

He hesitated for a second, but finally he passed his cup from one to another and shook hers.

“I’m Castiel. Castiel Novak.”

“There. We’re not strangers anymore and we can skip the small talk,” she said. “So what are your deepest, darkest fears, Castiel Novak?”

At the very least, it turned out he had a sense of humor. He stared at her weirdly for a moment and then he burst into laughter. Meg found herself thinking she liked the way he laughed.

They found a small secluded corner outside the frat house and they sat there and talked. She didn’t noticed it had been hours until Lilith showed up, stumbling and staggering a little and screamed at her if she was sober. Meg hadn’t even realized how little she had drunk until she pointed it out.

“’Cause I’m smashed and Ruby can’t stand up,” Lilith giggled. “So you’re gonna have to take us home.”

Meg grimaced and looked at Castiel. He looked disappointed that she had to leave, but he put on a brave face.

“Well, I… I guess this is goodbye.”

Meg didn’t move. She was considering doing something that went completely against the rules of the game.

“Do you have a pen?”

Castiel stared at her in surprise, but he recovered quickly and patted his pockets. It turned out he did have one, so Meg took it and wrote her number on the back of his palm.

“Call me,” she said, before standing up and going to pick up her wayward friends.

She didn’t think about it. She didn’t even hesitate. Later, as she held back Ruby’s hair while she vomited her guts out, Meg had plenty of time to wonder why the hell she had done that. She could’ve easily asked him for his number and she would have half the bet won. But she had spent hours talking to him, and she hadn’t felt bored or uneasy as it happened with most guys whenever she tried to have something other than a shallow flirt. Castiel was wicked smart, going on and on about books he had read, about stories and their deeper meaning, about how something as simple as words could create something real and lasting.

Meg understood that. She understood it because it was as if he had created a spell around her with only his words and she was still feeling the aftereffects.

She did end up sleeping with him by the end of the month, but when Lilith and Ruby tried to pay her, she rejected them. She was done playing by then. She had probably stopped playing the second she wrote her number on Castiel’s skin.

They got married six years later, a year after graduating. Meg still kept the pictures of their wedding and their honeymoon in the shelves with all his books. It showed her in her white wedding dress, holding a piece of cake in front of Castiel’s mouth for him to take a bite off. She remembered how much Lilith and Ruby had joked in their speeches that she wouldn’t have even met Castiel if it wasn’t for them and their game. She remembered the long warm nights in the hotel by the beach, with the sea crashing and moving right beyond their window.

“If I die tomorrow, I think I will die happy,” Meg told him one of those nights. They had just finished making love for the third time and they were exhausted but exultant. Castiel’s skin glowed and his hair was wet with sweat and she couldn’t believe how much she still wanted him. He lifted up his head to look at her.

“You can’t die tomorrow,” he told her. “We still have so many things to do.”

She laughed and rolled in the bed to place her head on his chest.

“Oh, yeah?”

“We have so many places to travel to,” he said, placing an arm around her and kissing the top of her hair. “So much wonders to see. So many new adventures.”

“Oh, yeah. We can look forward to paying off the mortgage of that house we bought and become an old married couple,” Meg replied, rolling her eyes. She joked, but the perspective was something of a wonder to her. She never believed she would see the day she would find a guy that would want to spend the rest of his life with her.

“The kids will surely enjoy it,” Castiel commented.

“We’re not having kids just yet,” Meg said, before playfully nuzzling his neck. “I want you all to myself first.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asked, his fingers running through her hair. “For how long do you want me?”

“Forever.”

“Then that’s how long I’ll stay with you.”

It felt like someone was squeezing her heart every time she looked at the pictures, but not having them there would be so much worse. Because then her life with Castiel would be like a dream, like a faraway mirage she could almost make out in the distance, something so fragile a faint breeze could blow it away.

She picks up her bag and limps towards the garage. She had to teach herself to drive again, not only because her body didn’t respond as quickly as before, but because sometimes she felt her heart racing with panic and her eyes burning with tears. But it’s the only way to go where he is.

It was easy, oh, so easy. She always thought love was hard and dramatic, but with Castiel, it was always easy. They fought, but it was never serious. They moved into the house and planted roses in the garden. On Christmas, they watched Castiel’s favorite white and black movie. They woke up by each other’s side and Meg kissed him by the door when he left for school. On the weekends, they took their car out for a ride to the nearby lake and had picnics in the shore.

They kept postponing the children. They were happy enough as it was. And that, Meg thought now, had been a mistake. Like it was a mistake to think it would last forever.

Castiel would’ve protested to anyone who called the accident a tragedy. Classic tragedies were foreshadowed by the hero’s hubris, they were a consequence of a mistake mere mortals were too blind to see. No, it wasn’t a tragedy. It was a catastrophe sent by some god jealous of their happiness.

Meg doesn’t remember much of it. One moment they were singing along to the radio, thinking about the wonderful moment day in the sun by the lake they had ahead of them. The next, without a single warning, their car was being thrown off the road with a din of broken glass and twisted metal she can still hear in her nightmares.

When she came to, the world had changed again. But this time, she hated everything that followed.

The hospital’s receptionist already knows her.

“Hello, Mrs. Novak,” she says, smiling at her. “How are you today?”

Meg doesn’t tell her she never really took Castiel’s name for herself. Instead, she greets her with a grin and tells her she’s doing fine, even though it’s a lie. They make small talk about the weather and the news, the sort of superficial small talk Castiel used to hate. Meg says goodbye to her and moves to the elevator. She turns around in time to see the look of pity the receptionist is throwing at her. Meg wonders if things had turned out different, if she was truly a widow, people would be inclined to pity her as much as they do.

Her cane echoes in the empty hospital hall as she moves towards his bed.

“There is nothing we could do for him, Mrs. Novak,” the doctor told her when she came out of the fog of the anesthetic, after the surgery when they tried to reconstruct her shattered hips and legs. “He’s unresponsive and…”

“But he could wake up,” Meg replied, stubbornly.

“It’s very unlikely…”

“But he could wake up!”

It aches, seeing him in that bed, tied to cables and machines that beep with the constant rhythm of his heart, the mask pumping oxygen into his lungs. It aches, but she’s not brave enough to flip the switch. Not yet.

They have a routine. She arrives and places her cane against the wall.

“Hello, Clarence,” she says, the old nickname rolling easy from her tongue. She ruffles his hair and moves her hand through his cheeks to check his stubble. The nurses had told her again and again that they don’t mind shaving him, but Meg insists on doing it herself. It’s one of the very few things she can still do for him.

After she’s done with that, she moves the chair closer, open her bag and takes out a book. It doesn’t matter what book. Castiel bought them by the bulk and he had a to-read list that never seemed to end. Meg knows which one he’s read and which ones he hasn’t by the creases on their back. She reads to him several chapters each day. She feels a bit like Sherezade, telling a story to keep death away for just another day.

But she’s not Sherezade and Death awaits. Castiel could go into cardiac arrest at any moment, and she doesn’t think the doctors will be in much hurry to resuscitate him. The insurance money is running out and she can’t take another mortgage on the house or sell her car. She’s only prolonging the inevitable.

And she doesn’t want to give into it just yet. She sits by his bed in her denial, unable to believe that twelve years of happiness next to that man are gone forever. She refuses to accept that he will never open his eyes and she will never see their bright blue again. Her voice breaks and she cries as she reads words that ring hollow, because no amount of stories can erase this reality.

She knows it’s just a matter of time before she has to accept that she’s lost him. She knows one day soon, the beeping of those machines will go quiet. She’s taken precautions for when that day comes. There’s a reason she’s been living in pain all those months, tricking the doctors into thinking she’s been taking her painkillers regularly.

“ _The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for_ ,” she reads. It sounds appropriate. Once Castiel, is gone, she will having to live for. If only they’d had children…

It’s too late for regrets now. All she can do is keep holding unto a hope she knows it’s fake. She hates herself for forcing him into this parody of a life, for not being able to let go of that hollow husk that once was the man she loved.

But she’s not ready to say goodbye to forever just yet.


End file.
